The scissors opened with a quiet metallic click.
I had spent the previous weeks imagining explanations for my missing memories, and none of them had prepared me for the sight of my husband standing beside our bed at two in the morning with a pair of scissors in his gloved hand.
He did not raise them toward my face.
That should have comforted me.
It did not.
Dererick sat carefully on the edge of the mattress near my waist.
The movement pressed the blanket against my legs. Every nerve in my body seemed to sharpen at once.
He picked up the hem of my pajama top.
For one sickening second, I thought he was going to cut the fabric away completely.
Instead, he pinched a small corner between two fingers and clipped off a narrow piece.
Snip.
The missing section was no bigger than a postage stamp.
He examined it beneath the weak light, then reached for the black bag.
From inside he removed a transparent evidence pouch.
My stomach tightened.
Evidence pouch was the phrase that came automatically to mind because I had seen similar bags on crime shows: clear plastic, resealable top, white panel for labeling.
Dererick placed the scrap of my clothing inside.
He sealed it.
Then he wrote something on the label.
I could not see the words.
He put the packet beside the notebook and turned another page.
Nothing about his behavior suggested panic or improvisation.
That was what I could not stop noticing.
He knew where each item was.
He knew what came next.
He knew exactly how long he could touch me without waking me because, as far as he understood, I had been given whatever was in the tea.
My mind began reconstructing previous mornings.
The twisted shirts.
The sore muscles.
The bruises.
The phone calls I did not remember making.
How many nights had he done this?
How many times had I lain in this exact bed believing my husband was sleeping beside me while he waited for a drug to erase my awareness?
Dererick stood and moved toward the camera.
He checked the screen.
Then he returned to me.
His gloved hand closed gently around my wrist.
I kept my arm limp.
He lifted it from the mattress and repositioned it above my head.
The gesture was careful, almost considerate.
That made it worse.
He stepped back.
The camera clicked.
Once.
Twice.
Then several times quickly.
Dererick changed my position again.
He turned my face toward the lamp.
I let my neck move without resistance.
A muscle near my jaw wanted to tighten. I forced it loose.
He took more photographs.
Then he adjusted the neckline of my pajama top.
There was nothing hurried or chaotic about what he was doing. He treated my body like a product being arranged for a catalogue shoot.
The comparison came to me because photography was familiar territory.
My design work often involved selecting images for commercial layouts. I knew how photographers thought about angles, lighting, framing.
Dererick was checking composition.
The knowledge filled me with a cold, precise horror.
Someone wanted these pictures.
He crossed to the dresser and examined the images he had taken.
Then he shook his head.
He returned.
This time he moved my left leg slightly and shifted the blanket.
Another photograph.
He looked again.
Better, apparently.
I remembered Clare asking whether I had been drinking.
I remembered Dererick suggesting sleepwalking.
I remembered him holding my bruised arm in the bathroom with such convincing concern.
He had known exactly where those marks came from.
The thought nearly broke my concentration.
My breath caught.
Very slightly.
Dererick stopped.
I heard nothing for two seconds.
Three.
His footsteps approached.
He stood over me.
I could feel his attention on my face.
Stay still.
My eyelids felt suddenly impossible to control. I became conscious of every muscle around them.
Dererick bent closer.
“Anna?”
The whisper was so soft that for a wild instant I wondered if I had imagined it.
I did not respond.
He waited.
Then he touched my shoulder.
Not roughly.
“Anna.”
I let my head roll a fraction with the pressure of his hand.
He watched me.
I could almost hear my own heartbeat.
Finally, he straightened.
A small breath left him.
Satisfied.
He went back to the dresser.
I wanted to run.
Every sensible part of me screamed that I had already seen enough. The camera existed. The bag existed. The notebook existed.
But what would happen if I moved?
Dererick was between me and the door.
My phone was on the nightstand beside him.
And I still had no idea what he had put in my tea or what he might do if he discovered that it had failed.
So I remained where I was.
He removed his phone from his pocket.
The screen illuminated his face.
A message had arrived.
He read it.
Then he smiled.
It was not a broad smile. Just a small movement at one corner of his mouth.
He typed something.
Almost immediately, another message appeared.
Dererick looked from the phone to me.
Then he reopened the notebook.
He turned back two pages.
The meaning was unmistakable even before he acted.
Someone was giving him directions.
The camera was not simply for him.
My husband was communicating with another person while I lay helpless—or while he believed I was helpless—in our bed.
Dererick came toward me again.
He changed the position of my right arm.
Photograph.
He checked the phone.
Another message.
He moved the pillow behind my head.
Photograph.
Another message.
A longer one this time.
He studied it for several seconds.
Then he opened the bedside drawer.
My entire body went cold.
That drawer contained ordinary things: charging cables, tissues, a paperback book I had abandoned halfway through.
Dererick removed nothing from it.
Instead, he seemed to be using the lamp beside it, angling the shade so the light struck one side of my face.
The camera clicked again.
He examined the result and sent it from his phone.
I could see enough of the screen to recognize an image thumbnail.
Me.
He had just sent my photograph to someone.
The person responded within seconds.
Dererick nodded to himself.
I felt something inside me shift.
Fear remained, but underneath it came something harder.
Until that moment, some small irrational part of me had still been searching for an explanation that did not destroy my marriage completely.
Perhaps he was documenting a medical condition.
Perhaps the samples had some bizarre connection to his job.
Perhaps there was something I did not understand.
The messages ended that fantasy.
There was another person on the other side.
Waiting.
Requesting.
Receiving pictures of me.
My husband was participating willingly.
Dererick set down his phone.
From the black bag he removed several individually wrapped cotton swabs.
He opened one.
The sterile-paper wrapper made a whispering crackle.
He rubbed the swab along the inside of my forearm.
Once.
Twice.
Then he placed it into a narrow tube.
He repeated the process near my shoulder.
Another tube.
A third swab touched the side of my neck.
I fought the instinct to recoil.
He labeled each sample.
I could not make out everything he wrote, but I saw a date.
Tonight’s date.
Beneath it, something that looked like a number.
Not my name.
A code.
He placed the tubes beside the fabric sample.
Then he consulted the notebook again.
I began to understand that the notebook might matter more than anything else in the room.
The camera contained photographs.
The phone contained messages.
But the notebook seemed to tell him what to collect, where to place me, and perhaps what had been done on other nights.
If I survived the night without revealing myself, I needed to find it.
Dererick picked up the camera and walked slowly around the bed.
More pictures.
Different angles.
He stopped near the footboard and zoomed in.
Then his phone vibrated again.
He read the new message.
His smile disappeared.
He typed a response.
Another message arrived.
This one made him frown.
He looked toward me.
Then toward the bedroom door.
Something about the exchange unsettled him.
He began packing items away more quickly.
The swabs went into the black bag.
The sample of my pajama fabric followed.
He folded the tripod, removed the camera and placed it in a padded compartment.
Then he picked up the notebook.
Before closing it, he wrote several lines.
I strained to see.
The first words were hidden by his wrist.
The last two were not.
Good response.
I stared at them.
My body had responded well to whatever he had done.
Whatever that meant.
Dererick closed the notebook.
He removed the gloves and placed them inside a small disposable bag rather than the wastebasket.
Even his cleanup had been planned.
He checked the room.
Pillow.
Blanket.
My clothing.
Camera position.
Everything went back to something close to normal.
He knew how to leave no obvious sign.
Which meant he had done it before.
Probably many times.
He carried the black bag to the door.
Then he stopped.
He turned back toward me.
The bedroom seemed impossibly quiet.
Dererick returned to the bedside.
He leaned down.
For one terrifying second, I believed he had realized I was awake.
Instead, his lips touched my forehead.
The same kiss he gave me most nights.
“Sweet dreams, Anna.”
I felt bile rise in my throat.
He straightened and walked away.
The hallway floor creaked beneath his weight.
I listened as he went downstairs.
A cabinet opened.
Then the front door.
Cold air seemed to move through the house.
The door shut quietly.
I waited.
One minute.
Two.
A car engine started outside.
Through the curtains, headlights swept briefly across the bedroom ceiling.
Then faded.
I still did not move.
What if he had only driven around the block?
What if someone else remained inside?
What if the whole thing was another test?
I counted three hundred breaths.
By the time I finally opened my eyes completely, the clock read 2:58.
I sat up too quickly and nearly fell from the bed.
My legs would not stop shaking.
The room looked ordinary again.
That was almost unbearable.
Our framed wedding photograph stood on the dresser.
My paperback remained beside the lamp.
Dererick’s slippers were aligned near his side of the bed.
Anyone walking into the room would have seen nothing except the accumulated details of a marriage.
I touched the cut edge of my pajama shirt.
A small square of fabric was missing.
That was real.
The camera had been real.
The samples had been real.
And somewhere outside the house, my husband was carrying photographs of me to people who knew exactly what he was doing.
Then I remembered something else.
Earlier that evening, while eating dinner, Dererick had mentioned his schedule.
He was supposed to leave for Chicago before sunrise.
Three days away.
At the time, I had barely listened.
Now those three days felt like the only opening I might ever get.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: After Dererick Drove Away, I Opened the Briefcase He Thought I Would Never Know Existed Beneath Our Bed
The Night I Poured Out My Husband’s Tea and Waited to Learn What He Expected Me Never to See
Part 2 of 24
